To further strengthen India’s healthcare sector, Technology Development Board (TDB), Department of Science & Technology, is supporting Chennai-based Kriya Medical Technologies for the development and commercialisation of saliva direct sample collection kit. TDB has penned the agreement to provide Rs 4 crore loan assistance out of the total project cost of Rs 9 crore.

The company intends to manufacture and commercialise a saliva collection kit with a molecular transport media (MTM) that will advance molecular diagnosis of infectious diseases and cancer screening.

The MTM enables the laboratory to skip RNA isolation protocol and facilitates DNA isolation. The current conventional collection method for viral pathogens, viral transport media (VTM), keeps the virus alive during lab manipulation. The company’s novel media inactivates the virus at the time of collection, thus avoiding the accidental spread of infections which is inherent with conventional VTM.

Furthermore, this new technique aims to improve both testing reach and patient comfort during the sample collection process. MTM does not require preserving the sample at stringent temperature conditions during transportation. Kriya’s collection kit relies on self-collection, which allows for significantly improved transport of samples from remote / rural areas and is less invasive compared to nasopharyngeal swabs.